lurching – Aspirational Adventures

This was my dog’s latest crisis – being trapped on the stair by the cat whilst I hoovered downstairs!!!

We seem to lurch from one media reported crisis to the next. All of which are pretty scary to say the least – whether it is the Russia/Ukraine war or what is going on with Hamas and the Israelites in Israel and Gaza, as well as our lurching UK NHS and education system crisis and the cost of living crisis. We are constantly being pulled to worry about things outside our control. I think this is why in my area at the moment there is so much focus on a local council threatening to ban dogs from its beaches all year round to the new 20 mile per hour speed limits. These are things we can control, things we can do something about.

I had been planning a post about how trivial these complaints are when so much else is going on but over this past week I “got it”. Yes we can send money to UNICEF for Ukraine, Gaza and Israel but we can’t do much to change the situation. But we can sign petitions for both the 20 mph changes and the dog ban on the beaches. We can moan to our local councils, who more often than not will listen to us and definitely will not shoot us. We are so lucky in this county to be able to do that. And, especially with local matters things often change because we could bump into our councilors in the park, in the pub, in the supermarket. And many of them are where they are because local matters are important. We can make a change

We cannot stop the atrocities in the Middle East, in Ukraine, with modern day slavery, with drugs, with all sorts of awfulness that actually we do forget about once it has moved away from the headlines. Even with our own health and education systems, if we are not affected personally we do forget about them.

The media encourages both that feeling of panic and of worry but once we “get used to” what is going on they find something else to cause us panic and worry. So we do then look to something, like dog bans or 20 mph speed changes, to vent that worry and panic on. It is all short term but it does sometimes help.

Prayer is one way to go. Although sometimes that can feel like God isn’t listening. How long does one pray for peace and watch people die? For people to stop abusing those more vulnerable than they are? For people to not need drugs and alcohol to find peace of mind and wholeness? It takes a certain type of person to keep hammering at God on those subjects when nothing seems to be happening.

So how do we trust that God is listening? This I cannot answer. I’m hoping when I get to heaven I will. But I have to have faith. Faith that my little, often half remembered prayers, get heard and thrown into the bigger pot.

He was given much incense to offer, with the prayers of all God’s people, on the golden altar in front of the throne. ⁴The smoke of the incense, together with the prayers of God’s people, went up before God from the angel’s hand.
Revelation 8:3-4

Though, like with much of the book of Revelation this is confusing because all these prayers get sent up and given to God then the angels cast down all sorts of nastiness on the earth. But I do have to have faith that God hears, that God listens and most importantly that God knows best.

Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see
Hebrews 11:1

This isn’t easy in the small things – like the death of a fellow dog walker, the death of an acquaintance from stomach cancer and another acquaintance from secondary breast cancer in this last month. But if my hope and faith isn’t in God then where is it? It can’t be in the media because that is fickle, as are the politicians, the economists, the world leaders, the leaders of terrorist groups, even my employers, parents, etc. They are fickle all of them. All are searching for keeping themselves safe.

God on the other hand doesn’t care what we think of them. In fact God doesn’t care if we give them a gender or not. God made us all so that we can love them completely, love each other completely and unconditionally, and they can love us with relentless conditional love. When we don’t do our part because we are scared, wanting our own way, fickle, fearful, etc then we to often pray “my will be done because I’m scared if you don’t do it my way things will get worse” rather than “your will be done because you know best and I trust you”

So with all this madness of people hating each other, of people fearing each other, of money being the biggest goal, are you, am I, willing to trust handing things over to God? Whether our worries are the wars and poverty in the world or personal things like 20 mph speed limits can we tell God our worries without telling them how to sort it. And will we be able to trust they have heard and trust that they can sort it?

Connected

I’ve been reading about the Red Crescent and the Red Cross lurching from disaster to disaster, appealing for donations and funding; Greek fires, Greek floods, dams bursting in Libya causing horrendous flooding, on-going strife in various African countries. And then there’s the fires in the West of the USA, floods in the South-East, on-going drug smuggling in various South American countries. Add in the migrant crisis – fear of those who leave whether from wars, famines, or for economic reasons and the fears of those who live in the countries the migrants are trying to reach. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

But we live in a world that is connected. The whole chaos theory of if something happens in one part of the world it can majorly effect something in another part of the world. The migrant crisis is a prime example of this – wars and famines often in countries we have never heard of affect us here not just with people coming to try to find safety but with commodities too.

So we need to be seeing the bigger picture not just lurch from crisis to crisis, not just try to find resources for X which takes it way from Y, not just giving time this when that means we can’t give to that. We need to know what the big picture is. But, and I know I’ve said this before, we need to slow down. We need to listen, need to really listen – to our world, to God, to stop trying to logically rationalise.

But how?

I think it is by connecting. Connecting with others. Connecting with God. Connecting with the world. When we lurch from one thing to another, one crisis, one trauma, one anxiety, we lose connection. We lose how we fit into the bigger picture.

As I’ve often said I don’t go to regular church any more, but I do feel connected with God and a group of Christian friends, and with the online things that are out there. But last Sunday I went to a church service. It was the sort of thing I like; for all ages but not cheesy; a deep message; time to chat with others about the message and other things; even though it was led by the vicar he did not portray himself as the one with the answers. It did make me realise I do need, occasionally, to connect with others, to hear other people, to think. But also what happened within connecting there was that the things in the all-age service connected into what we were doing in the youth service which followed.

But I think the reason it “worked” was because I did not go along on a superficial level, did not think I was better/more spiritual/more knowledgeable than others – both in the service and in the youth group. But I went along want to connect, wanting to learn, wanting to grow, wanting more than. And because I wanted “more than” I got it.

Going back to thinking about the bigger picture and want to stop lurching from one thing to another – I wonder how often we really want to know more. Whether when we watch the news, see newsfeeds, or even read blogs about all sorts, do we really want to learn, to grow, to get “more than”, or whether we come with our ready made answers that we will then trot out to others whether they want to hear them or not?

I think to connect we need to go in with an attitude of wanting to gain from others as well as give. Then I think we might get a glimpse of the bigger picture of what God is up to in our world.